“I got a sock!” I yelled to Pete.
“Who’s is it?” Pete yelled back.
“Mine,” I said even though I couldn’t tell.
One by one, we completed the unwilling scavenger hunt laid out by the temptresses. Eventually, we even got the girls. But we never got their clothes off.
Skiing
Mike was “Mr. Ski Club.” We stood atop a hill at Brandywine ready for the first run of the day for him and my first run ever.
He was checking down with all that I needed to know and I just ya-ya’d him, impatient and ready to go.
Finally, I said, “Got it!” And shot downhill like a bullet.
I heard, “But …” and nothing else as my friend’s voice faded.
I sailed so fast over the snow, straight down the hill, that I freaked out. I could not turn, stop or even slow down!
As I bore down on a man skiing up ahead, I cringed. He crisscrossed effortlessly, kicking up powdery white stuff. I was sure he was going to be knocked from here to eternity when I collided with him in about two seconds flat.
Why didn’t I stick around to listen to Mike explain how to turn, or better yet, how to stop?
As others described later, it looked like I was shot out of canon and about to kill somebody. They watched from above in horror, waiting for my impact with this unsuspecting stranger. Precisely at the very last moment, everyone closed their eyes or took a deep breath, and I woosh-wooshed around the man. In two quick movements with my feet, I skirted disaster – barely. My friends said the guy stood straight up, shocked by the brush back but was otherwise uninterrupted.
When I got near the bottom, I managed to wipe myself out to stop along a flat straightaway.
Mike came down the hill like a pro. This was baby stuff to him. Near the bottom, he hit a raised area to get fancy in the air. When he came down, he injured his ankle. Go figure.
Later in the day, the guys either thought I was ready for the meanest slope at the resort or were willing to see me die for laughs. As the saying goes, with friends like these, who needs enemies?
The ski lift got to the top but I was snagged and couldn’t shift myself to get off. The chair turned and rose higher off the ground, circling the control shack at the top. I mentally foreshadowed the humiliation of returning to the bottom of the slope, alone on a chair lift.
NO WAY!
I flung my body in a pathetic but successful last attempt to free myself. The problem was that I was not as close to the ground anymore but I landed on my feet, and then fell to my butt with quite a thud.
The lift stopped and a guy popped his operating shack door open yelling, “You alright?”
Laughing uncomfortably, I said, “Ya.”
He laughed, said “crazy,” shook his head, shut the door and started the lift again.
Looking downhill, it was clear that this course was not for beginners. In fact, it looked wickedly dangerous for someone like me. My depth perception was off. The slope was laden in terrain characterized by a large number of different bumps, or moguls. Not only that, but this slope was the steepest by far. Much like the beginning of the day, I became a human, heat-seeking missile.
Unlike earlier in the day, these moguls posed a different experience altogether. Quickly, my knees vibrated violently up and down at high speed. I should have wiped out, but instead I found myself lying straight on my back but upright on the skis. I could see the lift chairs overhead, off to the side, even though my head bounced violently off the never-ending moguls.
From my friends’ perspective, when my skis finally turned in on each other and I wiped out, it was like a scene from “The Agony of Defeat,” which was an infamous ski jumping sports clip gone oh-so-wrong. When I tumbled, it was bad. My body looked like a rag doll plummeting down the slope amidst an avalanche of snow and debris. By everyone’s account, they thought I broke every bone in my body. I lost both skis, poles, one boot and the other had every buckle burst open.
Mike was the first to get to me. “He’s conscious!”
The others gathered my stuff strewn all over the slope.
It was all we could talk about the rest of the evening as everyone recalled, in vivid detail, my spectacular flight down the slope. The laughter roared like the fire we perched in front of with hot cocoa.
I never skied again.
Fire in the Art Room
Our high school art room was once the gymnasium well before our time. It still had a parquet wood floor. A couple of smaller rooms were walled off from the main spread, which was huge for an art room. On one side of the big room was a long and deep balcony and on the other was an elevated glass-walled office and storage area. Both sides previously served as seating for sporting events.
Art classes spanned two study periods, scheduled at the end of the day, so we were in this room for huge blocks of time. After instructions for the day, the art teacher allowed us free rein to set up and let our creativity flow. Our creativity flowed upstairs, out of sight, in the balcony. Its only access was one set of steps other than a locked door to a second story hallway. Along the length of the balcony was a half-wall you could look over to view the big room below. There was a group of four of us who claimed the balcony as our space to work. Eddie, a very gifted artist, would take out the hall pass and skip most of class.
One day, Bobby and I sat in the privacy of the balcony along with Sarah. Bobby and I had finished our projects, so now we just leaned against the wall and talked. He kept putting a glob of rubber cement on a brush stick, dancing it in front of my face, goofing off. I flicked a lighter – jokingly – to ward off the glob before it dripped on me. We were just fooling around and never intended for anything to happen.
The lighter flame, although not touching the glob of rubber cement, somehow ignited it. Both of us snapped into action. Bobby shoved the brush stick lid back onto the jar thinking it would smother it. Instead, it exploded all over the balcony. Little fires were everywhere – on the floor and wall. Sarah, still working away on her project, also sprang into action and scrambled to contain and extinguish the mini fires burning near her.
Just as our frenzy was peaking, Eddie wandered up the stairs. Halfway up, there was a landing and a turn. He was nonchalant, pausing briefly to take in the crazy scene.
Our eyes met.
He turned away saying, “I had nothing to do with this!”
I bolted downstairs to get water. Just as I hit the lower floor, the teacher appeared across the room. My racing body caught his attention. He looked up so I slowed to a very casual pace, flipped the faucet on and filled a container of water. He looked away. I casually gazed up, heart pounding, expecting to see smoke curdling over the top of the balcony but there wasn’t any. I walked normally halfway up the steps but as soon as I was out of view from the floor below, I leapt to the top in time to help douse the last of the fires.
The main fire was much bigger and in the middle of the carpeted floor. Bobby had used a pile of old art projects, out of desperation, to smash it out. It all melted into a collage of glue, cardboard and carpet. It left an obvious and hideous black spot. Just then, the “tone” as we referred to it, sounded over the P.A. system. It signaled the change of class periods or in this case, the last bell.
We scrambled to hide our mess. We located a razor blade knife and cut out a section of carpet buried under old looms stuffed deep in a corner of the balcony. Then we cut out the large charred spot in the middle of the carpet, rolled it up and stuffed it inside one of the huge old looms. With little time, we decided to scatter a bunch of stuff over the top of the “hole” and finish our cover-up the next day. We figured nobody came up there but us, anyway.
The next day came and every time a class changed, gossip about the art room spread like wildfire. Police showed up. Every class was interrogated. During lunch, Bobby and I sneaked up the balcony stairs to see what was up. Our cover-up attempt was not only uncovered, revealing the hole we left, but markers were put everywhere our little fires
had burned on the floor and walls. Around the perimeter of the big hole was the unrolled charred section of carpet we had cut out, a lighter, rubber cement bottle – or what was left of one side – and other things that were damning to us.
It frightened us. This was a crime scene!
As the end of the day approached, Eddie, Sarah and others in the know passed Bobby and I in the halls during class changes saying things like, “You are screwed …It was nice knowing you …The cops are grilling everyone from every class.”
We felt the heat closing in and decided to come clean, voluntarily, to see if that might help alleviate the hellfire that was sure to rain down on us. Promptly, we were sent to the vice principal’s office.
When we walked up to the desk in the main office and told the secretary what we were there for, she got up, walked past us and said, “I am not sticking around to see this!”
We looked at each other, puzzled, and took a seat to wait for our sentencing. We waited and waited for what seemed to be an eternity and then the vice principal walked in. He looked at us, confused, and asked where the secretary went. Then he asked what we were waiting for. We said we were the ones who burnt up the art room.
“IN MY OFFICE – NOW!”
He slammed the door behind us and began to ream us good – and I mean GOOD! Blood vessels were popping in his beat-red neck and face.
Somewhere in the tirade, I raised my hand saying, “But, but, but …”
I wanted him to know we came forward on our own hoping for some mercy. It was the only card we had to play.
He stopped and shouted, “BUT WHAT!”
I told him. He paused. Silently, for a split moment, he contemplated in his mind on how to proceed. And just as we had hoped, he respected our voluntary admission, switching from a rage to a lecture. He let us off with seven detentions each – no suspension. We couldn’t believe our ears.
And our parents couldn’t believe the carpet bill.
Chank
A group of us planned to go to Cedar Point, otherwise known as the best amusement park on the planet.
The morning came and we managed to track down everyone scattered around town wherever last night’s parties dispensed them. This was before cell phones. The gang was eventually retrieved by word-of-mouth.
On the road to fun, we decided to pull off and get smokes and candy. Nobody was in the store, not even the clerk. We had what we needed and quickly grew impatient, waiting. We paused and yelled out for service one last time. Even though we were halfway through a heist, I think we secretly wanted someone to show up. Well, maybe not all of us. “Shark” had already made two trips to the truck.
It was a scalding hot day so we found ourselves in the longest line in the park, waiting for a water ride. We stood, walked a few feet and stood some more, over and over like zombies. Bored, we came up with our own entertainment as the line snaked slowly along the maze of railings. We told one of our friends that if he yelled “Chank” at the top of his lungs 100 times, we’d jump into the pond when we neared it. Chank was a slang word we used for an ugly woman.
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“CHANK-CHANK-CHANK…”
We were doubled over, laughing – howling laughing. People were trapped in line and had to deal with it. The people behind us left a big gap in the line.
“…CHANK-CHANK-CHANK… 50! …CHANK-CHANK-CHANK…”
His voice was going hoarse, but he kept belting it out. We couldn’t believe it. This was really happening. He was hell bent on getting to a hundred.
“CHANK-CHANK-CHANK… 100! …Jump in guys!”
“No way!”
We didn’t budge. It was an awful betrayal. We never imagined the possibility of the impossible happening. And there was nothing our friend could do about it but get angry …very, very angry.
Tension built, even on the water ride. When it made the final turn and floated against the slowly spinning, giant platform where riders exited and new riders boarded, things erupted. If we weren’t jumping in the pond, he was going to make sure we at least got wetter than we already were. He hung halfway out of our boat and splashed us with everything he could muster. Eddie exited left, into the water, and splashed back. The water fight escalated when we all abandoned ship. We were maniacs splashing and dunking each other in the water as other boats and riders slowly crept by, some laughing at us and some horrified by the scene. Park workers flocked to us and eventually got our attention.
We were removed from the ride but to our astonishment, not from the park.
Party Central
There were several party houses during my high school days but my best friend’s was party central – at least for our crew. His parents were RV enthusiasts and we always reassembled the house cleaner than we found it before they’d return. Call it self-preservation and planning ahead.
One Friday, I was called out of class because there was a death in my family and my dad was coming to pick me up in front of the school. I waited, very concerned wondering which grandparent passed. A huge RV rolled up in front of me in the bus lane. It was my friend, Mike.
“Get in!”
“What the hell, man?” I couldn’t believe my eyes. “What are you doing?”
“Picking you up!”
“Dude, my dad’s on his way. Someone …”
“I know, hop in sonny,” he interrupted.
Here, he had skipped school (and he was the honor student) because his parents went on a trip without the RV. He grew bored so he pretended to be my dad and called the school, staging the whole hoax. I laughed, somewhat in shock at the magnitude of this, jumped in and didn’t look back.
Crazy stuff happened at Mike’s house on a regular basis. His dad had an amazing collection of World War II artifacts, mainly weaponry. So, there was the night our other best friend, Steve (we were three peas in a pod), was shaken from a heart-wrenching break-up. Three sheets to the wind, he answered the knock at the door dressed in full combat gear, rounds of ammunition dripping off his torso, Kevlar helmet and rifle. Fortunately the policeman had a sense of humor and sense of understanding. The fact he knew Steve’s father may have also helped. That said, it was understood that we needed to heed his warning to turn down the music and not force him to come back.
If you fell asleep at one of these parties, that was your mistake. It wasn’t uncommon for someone to wake up in the morning missing some hair or having black magic marker writing all over their face.
Anyway, this particular night had all of the usual mischief and more.
I had to bring my car home for the night but was allowed to sleep over Mike’s house. Although he lived halfway across town, I walked. Two other friends came with me. Halfway down Electric Boulevard, a police cruiser pulled up and cut off our path on the sidewalk. The officer got out and began questioning us. It was more like accusations than questions but we had done nothing wrong – not illegally wrong anyway – not outside my friend’s house anyway.
“There was vandalism …” the officer continued.
My mom always told me to have no fear if you did nothing wrong. So, I stayed calm whereas my two buddies were itchy nervous to my side, I could sense it.
“Sir, where did this vandalism happen?” I asked.
Dad always taught me to be polite and respectful in such situations – okay maybe he was referring to being faced with a simple speeding ticket but I applied the advice more broadly.
The officer mentioned a neighborhood far from where we stood and not even close to being in the path from my house to my friend’s. I explained our whereabouts and said he could even verify it with my parents as we just left there not too long ago.
He got steamed. I recognized that I had seen this hot-headed cop before, so I walked on egg shells and tried to cooperate with his roadside interrogation.
“When did it happen, sir?” I asked.
“Last night,” he said matter of fact.
I couldn’t believe my ears an
d let my emotions flow out unchecked; justified by wrongful accusation, witch hunting, railroading or whatever you want to call it.
“Why stop and try to blame us for something that happened last night way over there?” I asked, losing my cool.
My friends took a step back, I presumed due to the street light now in my eyes.
“You’re a fucking vandal is what you are,” the officer said very angrily.
He slipped off his gun belt and held it off to his side and said, “Let’s see what you got – you think you’re so damn tough!”
I processed the obvious real quick. I was either going to get pummeled into oblivion or if by some miracle, I got lucky and somehow licked him, I’d be jail-bound for a good long time. Lose – lose: That was my situation.
Here I Thought I Was Normal: Micro Memoirs of Mischief Page 10
